In the Beginning (16 page)

I looked at the beacon outside the viewport. “It’s the end of the dark planet,” I said slowly. “We’ve touched off a chain reaction that will last forever.”

“Forever,” she repeated. “It’s all over now.”

“I don’t think we’ll ever forget Lanargon,” I said. “But I’d like to know what the galaxy’s astronomers are going to say when they notice a brand-new sun in this part of the cosmos.”

“They’ll have all sorts of wild guesses. But we can tell them the right answer, can’t we?”

“Yes,” I said. I glanced once more at the fissioning hell that had been Lanargon, shuddered, and set our course for Earth.

Cosmic Kill

(1957)

In the 1950s magazine covers were printed well ahead of the interiors of the magazines, done in batches of, I think, four at a time. This was a matter of economics—using one large plate to print four covers at once was much cheaper than printing them one by one. But sometimes the practice created problems.

For example, the April, 1957 cover of
Amazing Stories
was printed in the fall of 1956 with a group of others, well ahead of its publication date, bearing this announcement above the name of the magazine:

BEGINNING—COSMIC KILL—2-part serial of thundering impact

“Cosmic Kill” was supposed to be a sequel to a short novel that
Amazing
had published six years before—“Empire of Evil,” by Robert Arnette. The readers had supposedly been clamoring for a follow-up to that great story all that time, and now, finally, it was going to be published.

The trouble was that the actual author behind the “Arnette” pseudonym on “Empire of Evil” was Paul W. Fairman, and Fairman, having recently become the editor of
Amazing
and
Fantastic,
suddenly found that he didn’t have time to write a two-part serial of thundering impact. By December, 1956 publication day was nearing, though, for the April issue, due out in February, and a serial had to be found for it. So Paul Fairman phoned me one December morning and asked if I would mind very much writing a two-part serial called “Cosmic Kill,” a sequel to something of his from 1951—and deliver it the following week, because it had to be on the newsstands two months from then.

Sure, I said. Nothing to it.

That night I dug out the January, 1951
Amazing
and read “Empire of Evil,” which turned out to be a wild and woolly thing starring blue Mercurians with green blood, savage Martian hill men that had nasty tusks, and Venusians with big black tails. Even back then we knew that there weren’t any Mercurians, Martians, or Venusians, of course. That didn’t really matter to me at the moment. What did matter was that I had to put together a story of some sort, more or less overnight, that was in some way connected to its predecessor, and Fairman had either killed off or married off nearly all the characters in the original piece.

Well, never mind that, either. He had left one or two surviving villains, and I invented a couple of new characters to set out after them, and in short order I had put together a plot. It wasn’t going to be a literary masterpiece; it was just going to be a sequel, written to order, to Fairman’s slapdash space-opera, which had been goofy to the point of incoherence. But—what the hell—no one was going to know I had written it, after all. And I reminded myself that plenty of my illustrious colleagues had written pulp-magazine extravaganzas just as goofy in their younger days. Here was my revered Henry Kuttner’s novelet from
Marvel Science Stories
of 1939, “The Time Trap,” with this contents-page description: “Unleashed atomic force hurled Kent Mason into civilization’s dawn-era, to be wooed by the Silver Princess who’d journeyed from 2150 A.D., and to become the laboratory pawn of Greddar Klon—who’d been projected from five hundred centuries beyond Mason’s time sector!” Kuttner had put his own name on that one. And here in the same issue was future Grand Master Jack Williamson with “The Dead Spot”—“With his sigma-field that speeded evolution to the limit imposed by actual destruction of germ cells, plus his technique of building synthetic life, Dr. Clyburt Hope set out to create a new race—and return America’s golden harvest land into a gray cancer of leprous doom!”

The reputations of Kuttner and Williamson had survived their writing such silly stories. So would mine. But would I survive writing a 20,000-word novella in two days, which is what Fairman was expecting me to do?

Here my collaborator Randall Garrett came to my aid. I have never been much of a user of stimulants—I don’t even drink coffee. Garrett, though, said that my predicament could be solved with the help of something called benzedrine—we would call it “speed,” today—which he happened to take to control his weight. A little benzedrine would hop up my metabolism to the point where writing 40 pages in a one-day sitting would be no problem at all.

So he came over to my West End Avenue place and gave me a few little green pills, and the next day I wrote the first half of “Cosmic Kill,” and the day after that I wrote the second half. I went out of my way to mimic the style of the original story, using all sorts of substitutes for “he said” that were never part of my own style—“he snapped,” “he wheezed,” “she wailed” and peppering the pages with adverbial modifiers—“he continued inexorably,” “he said appreciatively,” “he remarked casually.” The next day I took the whole 80-page shebang down to Paul Fairman’s office and it went straight to the printer. It was just in time for serialization in the April and May, 1957 issues of
Amazing,
my one and only appearance under the byline of Robert Arnette. And on the seventh day I rested, you betcha.

The funny thing is that
Cosmic Kill
isn’t really so bad. I had to read it for the first time in 48 years for this collection, and I was impressed with the way it zips swiftly along from one dire situation to another without pausing for breath, exactly as its author did back there in December, 1956. Treat it as the curio it is: the one and only example of Silverberg writing a story on speed.

I

Lon Archman waited tensely for the Martian to come nearer: Around him, the ancient world’s hell-winds whined piercingly. Archman shivered involuntarily and squeezed tighter on the butt of the zam-gun.

One shot.
He had one shot left. And if the Martian were to fire before he did—

The wind picked up the red sand and tossed it at him as he crouched behind the twisted gabron-weed. The Martian advanced steadily, its heavy body swung forward in a low crouch. It was still out of range of the zam-gun. Archman didn’t dare fire yet, not with only one charge left.

A gust of devilish wind blew more sand in the Earthman’s face. He spat and dug at his eyes. A little undercurrent of fear beat in the back of his mind. He shoved the emotion away. Fear and Lon Archman didn’t mix.

But where the blazes was that Martian?

Ah—there. Stooping now behind the clump of gabron-weed. Inching forward on his belly toward Archman now. Archman could almost see the hill-creature’s tusks glinting in the dim light. His finger wavered on the zam-gun’s trigger. Again a gust of wind tossed sand in his eyes.

That was the Martian’s big advantage, he thought. The Martian had a transparent eyelid that kept the damned sand out; Archman was blinded by the stinging red stuff more often than not.

Well, I’ve got an advantage too. I’m an agent of Universal Intelligence, and that’s just a dumb Martian hillman out there trying to kill me.

A torrent of sand swept down over them again. Archman fumbled on the desert floor for a moment and grabbed a heavy lichen-encrusted rock. He heaved it as far as he could—forty feet, in Mars’ low grav. It kicked up a cloud of sand.

The Martian squealed in triumph and fired. Archman grinned, cupped his hands, threw his voice forty feet. The rock seemed to scream in mortal agony, ending in a choking gasp of death.

The Martian rose confidently from his hiding-place to survey the smoking remains of Archman. The Earthman waited until the Martian’s tusked head and shoulders were visible, then jammed down on the zam-gun’s firing stud.

It was his last shot—but his aim was good. The Martian gasped as the force-beam hit him, and slowly toppled to his native soil, his massive body burned to a hard black crust. Archman kept the beam on him until it flickered out, then thrust the now-useless zam-gun in his beltsash and stood up.

He had won.

He took three steps forward on the crunching sand—and suddenly bleak Mars dissolved and he was back in the secret offices of Universal Intelligence, on Earth. He heard the wry voice of Blake Wentworth, Chief of Intelligence, saying, “The next time you fight on Mars, Archman, it’ll be for keeps.”

***

The shock of transition numbed Archman for a second, but he bounced out of his freeze lightning-fast. Eyeing Wentworth he said, “You mean I passed your test?”

The Intelligence Chief toyed with his double chin, scowled, referred to the sheet of paper he held in his hand. “You did. You passed
this
test. But that doesn’t mean you would have survived the same situation on Mars.”

“How so?”

“After killing the Martian you rose without looking behind you. How did you know there wasn’t another Martian back there waiting to pot you the second you stood up?”

“Well, I—” Archman reddened, realizing he had no excuse. He had committed an inexcusable blunder. “I didn’t know, Chief. I fouled up. I guess you’ll have to look for someone else for the job of killing Darrien.”

He started to leave the office.

“Like hell I will,” Wentworth snapped. “You’re the man I want!”

“But—”

“You went through the series of test conflicts with 97.003 percent of success. The next best man in Intelligence scored 89.62. That’s not good enough. We figured 95% would be the kind of score a man would need in order to get to Mars, find Darrien, and kill him. You exceeded that mark by better than two percent. As for your blunder at the end—well, it doesn’t change things. It simply means you may not come back alive after the conclusion of your mission. But we don’t worry about that in Intelligence. Do we, Archman?”

“No, sir.”

“Good. Let’s get out of this testing lab, then, and into my office. I want to fill you in on the details of the job before I let you go.”

Wentworth led the way to an inner office and dropped down behind a desk specially contoured to admit his vast bulk. He mopped away sweat and stared levelly at the waiting Archman.

“How much do you know about Darrien, Lon?”

“That he’s an Earthman who hates Earth. That he’s one of the System’s most brilliant men—and its most brilliant criminal as well. He tried to overthrow the government twice, and the public screamed for his execution—but instead the High Council sent him to the penal colony on Venusia, in deference to his extraordinary mind.”

“Yes,” wheezed Wentworth. “The most disastrous move so far this century. I did my best to have that reptile executed, but the Council ignored me. So they sent him to Venusia—and in that cesspool he gathered a network of criminals around him and established his empire. An Empire we succeeded in destroying thanks to the heroic work of Tanton.”

Archman nodded solemnly. Everyone in Intelligence knew of Tanton, the semi-legendary blue Mercurian who had given his life to destroy Darrien’s vile empire. “But Darrien escaped, sir. Even as Space Fleet Three was bombarding Venusia, he and his closest henchmen got away on gravplates and escaped to Mars.”

“Yes,” said Wentworth, “To Mars. Where in the past five years he’s proceeded to establish a new empire twice as deadly and vicious as the one on Venus. We know he’s gathering strength for an attack on Earth—for an attack on the planet that cast him out, on the planet he hates more than anything in the cosmos.”

“Why don’t we just send a fleet up there and blast him out the way we did the last time?” Archman asked.

“Three reasons. One is the Clanton Space Mine, the umbrella of force-rays that surrounds his den on Mars and makes it invulnerable to attack—”

“But Davison has worked out a nullifier to the Clanton Mine, sir! That’s no reason—”

“Two,”
continued Wentworth inexorably, “Even though we can break down his barrier, our hands are tied. We can’t come down to the level of worms, Archman. Darrien hasn’t done anything—
yet.
We know he’s going to attack Earth with all he’s got, any day or week or month now—as soon as he’s ready. But until he does so, we’re helpless against him. Earth doesn’t fight preventive wars. We’d have a black eye with the whole galaxy if we declared war on Darrien after all our high-toned declarations.

“And Three, Intelligence doesn’t like to make the same mistake a second time. We bombed Darrien once, and he got away. This time, we’re going to make sure we get him.”

“By sending me, you mean?”

“Yes. Your job is to infiltrate into Darrien’s city, find him, and kill him. It won’t be easy. We know Darrien has several doubles, orthysynthetic duplicate robots. You’ll have to watch out for those. You won’t got two chances to kill the real Darrien.”

“I understand, sir.”

“And one other thing—this whole expedition of yours is strictly unofficial and illegal.”

“Sir?”

“You heard me. You won’t be on Mars as a representative of Universal Intelligence. You’re there on your own, as Lon Archman, Killer. Your job is to get Darrien without implicating Earth. Knock him off and the whole empire collapses. But you’re on your own, Archman. And you probably won’t come back.”

“I understand, sir. I understood that when I volunteered for this job.”

“Good. You leave for Mars tonight.”

***

A pair of black-tailed Venusians were sitting at the bar with a white-skinned Earth girl between them, as Hendrin the Mercurian entered. He had been on Mars only an hour, and wanted a drink to warm his gullet before he went any further. This was a cold planet; despite his thick shell-like hide, Hendrin didn’t overmuch care for the Martian weather.

“I’ll have a double bizant,” he snapped, spinning a silver three-creda piece on the shining counter. One of the Venusians looked up at that. The whip-like black tail twitched.